Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for their excellent presentations.
We have limits in time to hear from you, and I'm sure you have a lot more to share with us than the seven minutes and answering some questions will allow you. Could you each ensure that you have provided us a written brief along with your recommendations, which we would translate? The purpose of today is to hear your testimony. We'll be creating a report with recommendations to the government. If you have specific recommendations, it would really help to condense what you are recommending that the government include.
The focus is on whether we need a national seniors strategy. Do we need to have a recommendation of leadership in all the different levels of government? We heard some comments on that. Does the federal government, in providing leadership, need to have a minister for seniors? We heard about the secretariat. It sounds very interesting. Do we recommend that each province have a person who is in the lead so that we have a point person in every level of government? From the last witness we heard that the need is profound and urgent. We have a very quickly aging population, and it's not consistent across Canada. Some areas have a very large senior population.
I will start off with you, Dr. Cottle. Your examples were profound and actually gut-wrenching that we are not taking care of our senior population already. We heard that there is limited involvement in geriatrics. You are a physician in palliative care. There are not that many. In my riding of Langley, there is one palliative care doctor with a population of around 140,000 people. It's a great place to retire. I don't know statistically the percentage right now, but I'm guessing probably about one in four or one in five is a senior. Even around this table, you probably have one in four who is a senior. I'm a senior.